Book review: The Communist Manifesto

Or perhaps the Manifesto of the Communist Party. Whatever; it is mercifully short, though even so about half of it could have been removed, being merely preamble; it's a quick run-through of the analysis of Capital, I presume, so that you know the Victory of the Proletariat is inevitable; oh, goody. We've owned the thing time out of mind but despite it's shortness I don't think I've bothered read it before; and without Popper's TOSAIE I doubt I'd have got through it, or understood it, this time either. The backdrop, incidentally, is Hugh Gaitskell's "Soc+Nat", doubtless equally enthralling, that I hope to get to next. See what cleaning under the bed gets you? Onwards.

I'm not going to dispute their analysis here¹; suffice it to say I disagree; I'm mostly going to comment on their actual manifesto.

But first, I note the rather incongruous praise of the achievements: The bourgeoisie has... been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. And not just these physical wonders: also, man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. And reduced nationalism: it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood... by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. Not only that, it has rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

Given all these achievements, you might expect some praise for the system; but there is none; even more, you might expect some care not to destroy these achievements; to make sure that whatever replaces it can also provide such plenty: but no, this too is omitted².

Chapter 2 then introduces us to the oh-so-modest shrinking violets, the Communists, who are merely the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties... they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

But what do they actually want? What is their manifesto? In fact there are two, disjoint, manifestos: one is explictly spelled out in 10 numbered points; the other, which comes first, is more general, and is introduced more vaguely, as an answer to charges laid against the party.

Property

Here, I think the manifesto is full of lies; or contradictions; or perhaps they couldn't quite agree; or perhaps it describes different stages of time evolution without clearly distinguishing. Anyway: we begin with The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism. We then rapidly learn instead that their intent is the abolition of bourgeois property. Which is itself rapidly replaced with Abolition of private property. This is then followed by a pile of weaselling intended (I think) to show that the proles don't actually have any property, so abolishing all private property would only expropriate the Bourges, but rather noticeably it doesn't then go on to say that the Proles will end up with any of this nice property. Notice that they really do mean all private property: selling and buying disappears.

They do notice that It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us; but they have no real answer to this; and so it proved.

Family

Weirdly, they also want to abolish the family. These seems like Plato-style fascism; apparently justified by practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution. These people were nutters. I think they also want an openly legalised community of women ("community", in this sense, not being a happy association of same; but meaning women-in-common a-la Plato) but the text is not clear on this point.

Nationality

They desir[e] to abolish countries and nationality. I'm not going to whinge on this point; in many ways, a fine idea.

Morality

There is a brief section "answering" the charges leveled that Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality.... However, it believes these charges are not deserving of serious examination and so doesn't answer them.

The 10-point plan

In addition, there's a bolt-on 10-point-plan:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. [DONE] A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. [DONE] Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

7. [DONE] Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. [DONE] Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

I've marked as "done" those that arguably were done, in say the 70s at the height of nationalisation; thankfully that's been rolled back since. But we still have free education, and progressive income taxes.

Indeed, it's got more than he asked for in some instances: it doesn't even dare ask for total abolition of child labour in factories. Some of the points are now simply stupid: industrial armies for agriculture is dumb. Why it wanted to combine ag and ind labour I don't know; but (ha! Despite claims to prophecy) it obviously totally failed to foresee the withering of the ag workforce under mechanisatoin.

So with all those that got done, and those pointsthat are now clearly stupid or incomprehensible, it is unsurprising that the Golden dawn never arrived: as Popper points out, the prophesied continual immiseration simply didn't happen: thigs got better.

Notice, though, that the 10-point plan isn't really the same as the previously discussed stuff. Maybe it is just a stepping stone. If you've abolished all property, then 4 is impossible (or a null set joke, but I don't think these people did jokes). If you've abolished all buying and selling, what do you want "credit" for? Given their talk of the "idiocy" of rural life, why do they want to push people into the countryside?

Notes

1. Other than this one bit: It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. And so on. This stuff keeps coming back (the Great Recession of 2008 is the death-knell of Capitalism) and then a bit later on seems rather quaint. And indeed part of the Keynes-Hayek fight was over trade cycles.

2. The only nod in this direction is that, after the Glorious Dawn, they want to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. But there's no hint as to how they might go about doing it. This echoes Popper's criticism that Capital, whilst full of splendid analysis, has no idea how to put things into practice.